Interview: Christine Kole MacLean

Current Mood: cold
Current Song: Two for the Road score music by Henry Mancini

How It's Done deals with many transitions: going from
a teenager to an adult, from feeling unloved to
becoming the object of someone's affection, moving
from your parents' house to someone else's home.
The main character, Grace, approaches all of these transitions
and decisions with equal parts hesitation and
excitement. Read my full book review here.

What was the most difficult part of the
story to write? The most difficult subject to address?

Certainly you have touched on one of the most difficult -- capturing the
hesitation and the excitement of being 18 and in love and the thrill of
making decisions that could have a life-long impact. Staying firmly in
Grace's point of view, approaching situations with her naivete without
letting an adult sensibility seep in -- that was the challenge for me.

It's
hard to write young adult books because you have to forget everything
you've
learned since you were 18. I wonder if adults sometimes forget that
things
that set off warning bells and flashing lights for us do so *only*
because
of experiences we had when we were younger. Teenagers are encountering
those
situations for the very first time. They don't yet have the experience
that
will set off the bells. That's what I had to work hard to remember as I
was
writing the entire book.

The book toes the line tastefully when discussing
adult situations, religion, and responsibility. How
careful were you when writing the book?

I was more concerned about being true to the characters than I was
about any
issues that came up in the course of the story, e.g., abortion or
religion.
I wasn't interested in making any moral statements; I just wanted to
follow
Grace, whose parents happen to be fundamentalists, as she faces this
relationship challenge. She knows she wants to get out of the box her
father
has her in, and she's willing to take a drastic step to do that. But
then
what? She gets in way over her head.

What's the target audience for this book?

I think high school readers would get the most
out
of it. You have to have a certain amount of maturity to even appreciate
the
issues that Grace wrestles with in the book.

The plotline can be boiled down to "teen girl falls
for an older man," but it is, of course, more than
that. What inspired this story?

When we were teenagers, my friends and I all dated men. There was so
much
that was attractive about them--they had jobs, life experiences, places
of
their own. Suddenly you're being treated as a peer in the adult world,
instead of as a child. It's easy to go from there to thinking that you
have
arrived and your development is over. But there are no shortcuts to
finding
yourself. You still have to do the work of figuring out who you are and
what
you stand for. And it's *in the work* that you actually do figure out
who
you are and what you stand for. Self-discovery and self-knowledge come
in
the process. It's not something you can outsource or do from a
distance. You
have to get your hands dirty -- and Grace eventually does.

How It's Done was your first teen novel. Are you
working on another?

I have lots of ideas, one of which is a sequel of
sorts
that would pick up Grace's friend Liv's story. Some readers have been
disappointed by her actions and I'd like to give her a shot at
redemption.

Do you tend to write from start to finish, or here and
there as scenes come to mind?

Every novel is a little different, but I usually write from beginning
to
end. For this novel, I used a long piece of butcher paper and Post-It
notes
for major events that happen in each chapter. The Post-Its were
color-coded,
one color for each character, so I could see at a glance when a certain
character had disappeared for too long. While I did multiple drafts,
the
story arc itself remained pretty much the same. I needed the multiple
drafts
to fully develop the characters. It's like what I was just saying about
self-knowledge, come to think of it! Only in the process of writing
about
them (over and over!) could I fully know the characters.

Tell us about the Mary Margaret novels you've written for
elementary school kids.

The idea for the first book (MARY MARGARET AND
THE
PERFECT PET PLAN) actually came from my own family situation: Both my
kids
desperately wanted a pet, but my husband is allergic to dander, which
kind
of limited our choices. Anyway, I wrote the story first as a picture
book,
but my editor suggested I make it longer and it ended up as a novel,
and now
a series that Scholastic has picked up for its book clubs and fairs.

The third novel in that series (MARY MARGARET MEETS HER MATCH)
comes
out in February 2007, and I'm thinking about writing a fourth. Mary
Margaret
is a joy to write; she frequently makes me laugh out loud! I think kids
really relate to her because she is brutally honest about her feelings,
even
when they aren't pretty. She has her own site with activities and a blog.

Thanks to you and Penguin Books,
a portion of the proceeds from the picture book Even
Firefighters Hug Their Moms is donated to the Twin
Towers Orphan Fund.

That was Penguin's idea and contribution, and I was so pleased. I had
finished the manuscript in late August and was actually polishing it on
the
morning of September 11. My husband called and asked me if I was
watching
TV. I remember being offended -- why would I be watching daytime TV? I
had
work to do! -- until he explained. I was overwhelmed by the events of
that day
and I shelved the book. Like others around the country, I had no
interest in
or energy for anything besides trying to absorb the magnitude of the
tragedy
and make sense of what had happened. Ultimately I realized that the
story is
a reassuring one, and we all needed more reassurance and comfort right
then.
So I pulled it off the shelf and sent it out.

So . . . how _is_ it done?

"How It's Done" refers to many things in the book. The central "it"
refers
to finding yourself, and I think for most of us, that's done one
tentative
step at a time -- sometimes in the wrong direction. There is no one way
to do
it, and therein lies the beauty and the danger. You're human. You will
make
mistakes, but those mistakes shape each of us into unique people.

I
believe
finding yourself is a lifelong process, and it can be a lonely road. If
you're lucky, you have people that will hold your hand along the way,
not to
steer you or hold you back or pull you along, but to steady you and
keep you
company.

What are your ten favorite books of all time?

I can't possibly name my favorites, but I can list books that have
stuck
with me. Power of the Dog (Thomas Savage), Beloved (Toni Morrison),
Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver), East of Eden and The Wayward Bus
and
The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck), Lady Chatterly's Lover (D.H.
Lawrence), J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (which
I
feel is the cleanest and strongest book in the series), A Prayer for
Owen
Meany (John Irving), Turn of the Screw (Henry James), One Hundred Years
of
Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez), Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora
Neale
Hurston), Light in August (William Faulkner), Middlemarch (George
Elliot),
An American Tragedy (Theodore Dreiser), Northanger Abbey (Jane
Austen -- she's
so good at poking fun at society!), Truth and Beauty (Ann Patchett),
and
Savage Beauty (Nancy Milford). The last two are non-fiction titles.

If I talk about a book, it's more likely to stay with me, and many of
the
titles on this list are books we've discussed in the book club I've
belonged
to for the last 12 years. It's a top-notch group of readers!